Running your own wraparound care provision sounds simple enough – until it isn’t. For Simon England, headteacher at Ashwell Primary School in North Hertfordshire, it was quietly becoming one of the biggest drains on his team. Here’s how things changed.

You’ve got a wraparound provision up and running, parents are relying on it, but behind the scenes, it’s a different story. Staff are stretched, the admin keeps piling up, and covering a last-minute absence feels like one more thing on an already very full plate. Sound familiar?

That was exactly where Ashwell Primary School found itself. The provision existed, but the cost of running it in-house was being felt by everyone. Teaching assistants were moving straight from full days in the classroom into after-school sessions. The office team were spending a disproportionate amount of their week on booking admin, invoicing and chasing payments.

“It was staffed by our own staff, many of which worked full-time already during the school day,” Mr England explains. “So for staff to have to do before school wraparound, all day provision within school, including lunch times for many of them, and then after school into the evening – it was difficult.”

We hear this a lot. The need for high-quality wraparound care is there, but delivering it well, consistently, without it eating into your team’s capacity? That’s the real challenge. And it’s one that more and more schools are choosing not to tackle alone.

“It was preventing them from being effective in other parts of their job”

For Ashwell, it wasn’t just staff fatigue. It was the invisible weight of running a provision that had its own admin system – bookings, invoices, late payments, cover arrangements, all sitting on a small office team who had plenty of other things to be getting on with.

“The admin time taken up was disproportionate to their other roles. It was preventing them from being effective in other aspects of their job – from the booking systems to the invoicing, the chasing, sometimes late collection payments.” – Simon England, Headteacher, Ashwell Primary School

Whenever a staff member called in sick? That was the headteacher’s problem to solve, with no easy cover, and no breathing room. Something had to give.

Why handing over to Premier felt like the obvious next step.

Here’s where Ashwell’s story takes a different turn from a cold-start outsourcing decision. The school had been working with Premier Education since around 2018, with Premier delivering PPA cover and bringing specialist sports coaches in for PE. That relationship had already given Mr England a clear sense of what Premier looked like in practice – the quality of the staff, the communication, the professionalism day to day.

So when wraparound care came onto the agenda, there was no leap of faith required. Mr England visited a local school already running Premier wraparound, had a conversation with the headteacher there, and could see for himself what the difference looked like.

“It became very quickly obvious that we could both improve and further the quality of the provision, whilst also taking away some of the burden of the admin.”

Almost every staff member made the change

One of the questions we get asked by headteachers considering this kind of change is: what actually happens to our existing staff? It’s the right question to ask, and at Ashwell, it was handled with care from the start.

Premier’s Area Manager, Ross Catchpole, led the transition. Every member of staff who had been running the provision in-house was offered employment with Premier, and almost all of them moved across.

“We had a seamless transition from the in-house provision to Premier Education wraparound,” Ross explains, “where we transferred all employment of their current staff members to come over to Premier Education – continuing in their employment.”

“The change was relatively seamless. That enabled us then to work on improved outcomes and the quality of provision more quickly, because those relationships were already established.” – Simon England, Headteacher, Ashwell Primary School

Mr England describes it as a genuine partnership rather than a handover: Premier led the process with the confidence of a team who’d done it many times before, while the school stayed involved in the way that mattered to them. “Premier were happy for us to be involved. But we were also keen for them to lead on it, guided by the experience they have in setting up provisions across the country.”

Themed sessions, sports coaches and arts and crafts: what Ashwell’s children come to now

The difference in the quality of the provision since the transition? Mr England notices it every day.

Where once tired TAs were pulling together activities at the end of a long school day, there’s now a clear, purposeful structure to every session – themed evenings, planned sports, arts and crafts, delivered by a team whose sole job is to make wraparound brilliant.

“We hadn’t got staff running from a classroom as a teaching assistant into wraparound care, having thrown together an activity,” He says. “There is a real clear structure and a real clear timetable. We could never achieve that as a school, because we had to prioritise our staff’s role in teaching and learning during the day.”

Mr England is also clear that great wraparound care should feel different from the school day, and Premier’s team gets that instinctively. “Our belief is that wraparound care should be different from school. That downtime is the children’s time to have that play, that enjoyment, that activity, that social time.” Premier staff, many of whom deliver PE at Ashwell during the school day, make that shift naturally. Children feel the difference. Parents notice it too.

“It is no longer my problem”: how Mr England got his headspace back

If Ashwell’s children have gained a richer provision, Mr England has gained something equally valuable – the mental space to focus on actually leading his school.

Staff absence in wraparound? Not his problem anymore. Premier draws on a wider pool of trained staff across the team who can step in flexibly, without fuss and without it falling back on the school.

“It is no longer my problem if there is staff absence or sickness in wraparound care. We’ve got someone who has a pool of people from across the Premier team who can step in.” – Simon England, Headteacher, Ashwell Primary School

Area Manager, Ross puts the school-side benefit simply: “A key benefit is it removes all the headaches, from taking bookings and chasing payments to actually staffing the provision. Schools can concentrate on teaching and learning. We take care of the rest.”

PE coaches, holiday clubs and after-school clubs: one team doing it all

Today, Premier Education’s relationship with Ashwell goes well beyond wraparound. The school benefits from PE and PPA cover, after school clubs, lunchtime clubs and holiday clubs, which have grown so popular they now bring in children from well outside the school’s own community.

It’s what we call the one-provider approach: one familiar team, one consistent standard, one voice for parents across everything. For Simon, that consistency is what makes it feel less like a contract and more like an extension of his school.

“It’s like a team. It’s like a family. Premier staff adopt our school ethos and values, we work in partnership with theirs, and it just becomes one umbrella of opportunities and experiences for the children.” – Simon England, Headteacher, Ashwell Primary School

“We’ve never looked back”: Mr England’s advice to headteachers who are on the fence

We’ll let him take this one.

“I would say: go for it. We’ve never looked back. You will gain a lot of time back and you will be able to reallocate that time to the things that matter – without losing the important offer for families and children of the wraparound.” – Simon England, Headteacher, Ashwell Primary School

Could this be your school’s story?

Whether you’re running your own provision and finding it unsustainable, or exploring wraparound care for the first time, we’d love to chat. Our wraparound care provision is designed to take the weight off your school, while giving children the kind of active, structured, genuinely fun before and after school experience that families come to rely on. We’re already doing it across 270 schools, and counting.

Get in touch with the team today – we’ll take it from there.

Happy Kids. Healthy Futures.